TOLKIEN, J.R.R.

born Jan. 3, 1892, Bloemfontein, S.Af. died Sept. 2, 1973, Bournemouth, Hampshire, Eng. in full John Ronald Reuel Tolkien English novelist and scholar who achieved fame with his richly inventive epic trilogy The Lord of the Rings (195455). The work consists of The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. This remarkable work by the mid-1960s had become, especially in its appeal to young people, a sociocultural phenomenon. Taken to England at the age of four, Tolkien was educated at the University of Oxford (B.A., 1913; M.A., 1919) and served in World War I. He was a professor of Anglo-Saxon (192545) and of English language and literature (194559) at Oxford. His scholarly works include an edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1925) with E.V. Gordon and Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics (1936). Tolkien began writing The Hobbit in 1936. For a number of years previously he had been inventing languages for the mythical placeMiddle Earththat is the setting for the The Hobbit and had been writing stories about Middle Earth as well (which were published posthumously as The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales ). The Hobbit, published in 1937, was soon quite popular, and Tolkien was asked for a sequel by his publisher. In 1937 he began work on what would eventually be published as The Lord of the Rings. Both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are set in a mythical past; the latter work chronicles the struggle between various good and evil kingdoms for possession of a magical ring that can shift the balance of power in the world. The trilogy is remarkable for both its subtly delineated fantasy types (elves, dwarves, and hobbits) and its sustained imaginative storytelling. It is noteworthy as a rare, successful modern version of the heroic epic. An animated film version of the first two books of the trilogy appeared in 1978.